


Blow Us All Away

by Motionisrelative



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Spoilers, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-10 06:37:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7834090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Motionisrelative/pseuds/Motionisrelative
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scorpius Malfoy is untouchable, but there are greater gods than him.  When he's sent on a mission into the past, he starts to realize just how much he doesn't know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Omens

Her hands clasp Scorpius’s hips from behind, and he can't help a little shiver.  He spins to face her, grinning.

"Chapman.  Sneak up on a guy like that and you're going to get yourself hexed."

"No one else would dare.  I like my chances." She shifts her weight, leaning on one leg and cocking her hip.  It's a challenge, but one she neither expects nor wants to win.  She's predictable, satisfying, familiar.

He tips her chin up. "Twice the reason to do it, then." 

This, normally, is where she would blush and look down, where Scorpius would give her a practiced smirk and summarily end the exchange, on his terms.  But her eyes are sizzling on his and he thinks if he weren't so used to holding his ground under pressure he might actually squirm.

He reaches down to tuck a piece of hair behind her ear. "Cute," he breathes.

She arches her neck with his fingers.  The skin looks taut, and delicate as silk.  He imagines piercing it with his teeth. "Me? Not likely." 

"I don't know.  Even in Dark Arts lessons you're always checking to see if I'm watching.  I think you're pretty cute."

"Pretty, cute?"

“Yes." Both of them smile.

It's true, about Polly, but what he omits is that he always is watching.  There's something about the way she fights that's almost wanton, an unrefined quality that draws him to her.  He had only ever known cruelty to be cold, until her.  

"Well, now that I've got that out of you, I actually had a message for you from the headmistress."

Scorpius groans. "No rest for the wicked.  What does she want?" 

"Wouldn't say.  Top secret, very important, probably will be bloody so change.  I like those robes on you."

"I think you'd like them better with a little blood on them," he points out absently, taking out his watch. "How much time do I have?"

"Half an hour when she sent me, so...oh, shit."

He snaps the watch shut and glares at her. "So I'm already late."

"Hey, you can do no wrong with her, Scorpion King.”

He can take the name seriously. Mostly.

“Better hope I cover for you, then.” He winks.

That stops her in her tracks. “Scorpius, you’d better not—”

He puts a finger to her lips, and now, now he’s smirking. “We’ll see.”

Trailed by her outrage, he saunters out of the common room. It’s good to be king.

 

“You wanted to see me, Headmistress?”

He drapes himself languidly in the doorframe, then freezes, suddenly winded by shock as though he’s been hit in the stomach, bent double by something heavy and unrelenting.

His training takes a moment to recover itself, but he drops to his knees as suddenly as if he’s been knocked onto them. Distantly, he thinks it must look almost comical.

“Young Mr. Malfoy, what a pleasure.” 

Scorpius keeps his eyes on the floor, head down, voice even. It’s one of the hardest things he’s ever done.

“It’s an immeasurable honor, Augurey.”

She laughs, bright and clear. “I know. You may stand.”

He obeys, still looking determinedly at his feet until a hand brushes his skin. Slowly, he looks up.

She’s magnificent. Queenly in her bearing, quiet wisdom flickering behind her eyes, a true Oracle. Scorpius is struck suddenly by a sense of smallness, an instinct to submit. He thinks she really must have been chosen by the gods, whoever they are.

“Impressive,” she says, “very impressive.”

His heart leaps.

“You were right about him, Dolores.” The Augurey turns to her, giving him a long and knowing look he doesn’t quite understand out of the sides of her eyes. “He’ll do perfectly.”

Umbridge simpers, and for the first time, when Scorpius looks back at her every shred of fear he might have had has dissolved into contempt. 

“What…what is it you desire, my Lady?” he croaks, his throat so dry that the words catch.

When she looks in his eyes, it’s an excruciating glory. He thinks of Phaethon, of Icarus.

“A Chosen One.”


	2. Heroes and Histories

Scorpius knows humiliation inside and out, knows the pliability of those who seek revenge. They think themselves dangerous. He knows how to show them they’re not. How to break them.

What no one has ever taught him is how to build them back up.

“What if I can’t do it?” he’d asked, and she’d smiled gently, taken his hand and pressed it to her collarbone, where on the clasp of her cloak the augurey’s eyes glittered like a living thing.

“You already did,” she’d told him.

_Courage_ is a dirty word in his house. It means a failure to consider consequences, a lack of foresight, sloppiness. But he needs it now, needs her words warming his chest. Her trust is a gift to be treasured, and he cannot throw it away. 

Every moment he’s lived has been a lesson in manipulation: at his mother’s breast the power of need, at his father’s knee the weight of fear. On Polly’s lips the dread of loneliness. All in service of this moment. This world is the Augurey’s game, and he her white knight. He’s grateful. He doesn’t think about what he might have had. 

Neville Longbottom was good, and kind. It makes it easier. 

_The traitor Neville Longbottom died foolishly, in one of the earliest attacks on the Dark Lord’s forces. He is remembered only as a cautionary tale on the dangers of brashness and overconfidence._

Scorpius has always liked history.

The corridor is quieter than he’s ever heard it, eerie. Something about it gives him a twisting sense of unease. He can feel the absence of the dementors, sense somewhere in his core the lifting of the Dark Lord’s heavy hand on the school. It feels wrong. He can’t quite believe this is where his father grew up.

It’s only a few seconds before Longbottom arrives, as the Augurey promised. He’s not surprised exactly, just struck by renewed awe. How does she always know?

He hisses a Trip Jinx under his breath, snickering as Longbottom yelps. Fifteen years of regimented discipline keep him half-hidden in the darkness, even though he burns to see him, this would-be hero who in his own brilliant supernova turned his world to ash.

“Who—who’s there?” Longbottom—well—whimpers.

He clambers to his feet. It’s not very elegant. Scorpius edges a little more into the light, then mutters, _“Tarantallegra.”_

He shouts as his feet begin to move of their own accord, performing an unimpressive jig utterly removed from the rest of his body. Scorpius is openly laughing now.

“Malfoy!” he pants, with a certain thrill of discovery.

Well, that’s his cue. He smirks, stepping forward and cutting the spell short. If there’s one thing he knows how to do, it’s imitate his father.

“Impressively deduced,” he sneers, then stops, staring. _This_ is Neville Longbottom, hotheaded martyr, practically a shorthand for foolhardy confidence? 

He’s…

Not as dashing as Scorpius expected.

The kid doesn’t even have his wand raised, just clutches it like a child’s toy and snivels. He can’t believe how soft he is, how comparatively gentle this world has been with him. “L-le-leave me alone, Malfoy.”

He can work with this. Somehow. “Why, going to cry all night about your parents? I’m doing you a favour, Longbottom.”

“Shut up!”

Marginally better. “Are you _drooling?_ Get that from Mummy?”

Longbottom is on his feet now, wordless with rage. Scorpius laughs. “I guess that’s where the bed-wetting comes from too—”

_“Langlock!”_

_“Prote—”_ Scorpius starts, one calculated moment too slow. He winces as his tongue seals to the roof of his mouth.

“Don’t— _ever_ —” He’s advancing, red with fury. Scorpius does his best to look frightened. “Say a _word_ about—”

He lets his eyes bulge as Longbottom approaches, making sure he sees every satisfying twitch of terror, watching the beginnings of wonder on the boy’s face, before turning tail and fleeing.

Now just to wait until—

_“Longbottom?”_

Oh. Oh, no. She warned him, how could he be so stupid…

He mutters a Disillusionment Charm and presses his back into the wall, his thoughts racing so fast he can hardly hold onto them. He has to get Longbottom out of this, has to keep this fragile moment of confidence…

“What—Malfoy—I just jinxed you!”

Scorpius checks his watch. Four minutes, thirty seconds. No.

_“You,_ jinxed _me?”_ He can hear the beginnings of his father’s derisive laugh, though there’s an unfamiliar childish note in it that throws him. “Let’s see about that, shall we?”

Ten seconds. 

“Draco!” he calls, desperately, in the closest approximation he can muster of Goyle’s near-unintelligible rumble.

His father’s head jerks up. “What in Merlin’s name…”

It’s the last thing he sees before he feels himself being swept away, fast and heavy and too much to fight. For the first time in his life, he thinks he might not have been enough.


	3. A Whole New World

He lands—awakens—appears in the same corridor. He doesn’t know how to name it, how to classify it, how to make sense of any of this at all except that he’s doing what he’s told. What is expected and right. 

_You don’t need to know, Scorpius. You just need to obey._

He feels again the childish bite on words that burn in his throat, the bitter and metallic taste of restraint.

It’s still night, still five minutes later the same night he left, and trying to understand it feels like trying to pull apart a knot that stress and time have turned immovable. This is the Augurey’s domain, not his. He’s not sure why he’s questioning her.

Of course it worked, Scorpius rationalizes. Of course, because it had already happened… So if he walks out of this corridor now, he’ll be who he’s always been and much more. Her Chosen One. Of course he will. If he just walks out of this corridor.

It still doesn’t feel right, but maybe he’s just remembering the unsettling _lightness_ of Hogwarts in the past. Like he’d lost everything holding him to the earth and might disappear at any moment. 

He cannot have failed. 

It shouldn’t be possible.

The thought is enough to pull him from his hiding place. This is his world, and he will not be weak in it.

Scorpius stands, hissing a quick _“Lumos.”_ The corridor lights up in a wash of white, and he looks around for any sign of the Dark Lord’s presence. There’s none. Were there banners on these walls? He can’t remember. There must not have been, now that he thinks about it, just his memory filling in the gaps….

“Malfoy!” 

His head snaps to the side, his body instantly assuming the lazy grace that will probably never come naturally. “Yes?” 

“What do you mean, _yes?”_ She’s imitating his voice. “What are you doing up? You’re going to lose points for all of us.”

It’s Polly. He relaxes slightly and steps up to her, though her tone makes him uneasy. “Me, lose points? Have you forgotten who I am?” It’s low and soft and just on the teasing edge of threatening.

She backs up, and if he hadn’t been trained out of it he could cry with relief, until she speaks. “Don’t be freaky, Malfoy. Aren’t there enough rumours about you already?”

_“Chapman…”_ The warning is second nature. There’s a terrible heaviness in his stomach, past fear into knowing, dread. This isn’t right. “Why don’t you tell me about them?” he drawls. Polly might like needling him, but there’s only so far she’ll push him…

“The Voldemort’s son thing ranks pretty high on the list,” she retorts. “You’re acting weird. Just—go to bed and I won’t tell anyone about this.”

“What are you talking about?” His voice has a twang of desperation to it, too high and too urgent. He brings it down with effort. “Voldemort’s son?”

“Yes,” she says, enunciating very clearly. He’s seen her like this a thousand times, it seems like, superior and patronizing, but never, _never,_ to him. “Malfoy, someone’s going to hear you—”

“Why do you keep saying that? Even if I weren’t a Malfoy, I’m a prefect at least—”

For the first time, she looks scared. Not of him. _For_ him.

“No, you’re not, Scorpius…Albus and I are prefects, remember?” 

He can’t think. He realizes now that fearing he failed is nothing, fear of failure has been his whole life, but this…

Knowing he has, he can’t think at all. He assumes it must be a nightmare.

“Who’s Albus?” he chokes out.

“Albus Potter. Your best friend. Your only friend, actually, if we’re being technical…”

_No._

His hand closes over the Time-Turner in his pocket. He can fix this. No one ever has to know he made a mistake at all. A challenge he didn’t expect, but one he will conquer nonetheless. He just has to wait for the right moment.

“Polly,” he announces, “I don’t think I’m feeling very well. Can you tell Albus to meet me in the hospital wing?”


End file.
